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Lake Temple Road

Have You Seen The Art Popping Up On Kolkata's Electric Boxes Yet?

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Have you noticed the beautifully painted CESC power boxes that have been popping up around the city? Been wondering, “how, why and what”? We have a lowdown on what’s going on.

What Makes It Awesome

Set up as a heritage art project to remember and celebrate famous Calcutta residents, the project remains unnamed but has captured the imagination of the city. CESC power boxes dot the city in many places, including a number of areas that were the haunts of famous personages {Netaji Subhash, Surendra Paul, Satyajit Ray, Pam Crain, Usha Uthup etc} and iconic places like Flurys and Skyroom. However the decrepit condition of such feeder boxes meant that apart from its functional usage, they were largely just standing around, ignored. A city agency had a marvelous idea to jazz up the boxes and — at the same time — generating awareness regarding Kolkata’s iconic personalities.

It is interesting to note that apart from the attractive visual representations of people, the boxes also have minimal copy {in gorgeous lettering} highlighting some information about the person or iconic Kolkata places stating the antecedents and claim to fame. The first of these boxes were painted on Lake Temple Road wherein Satyajit Ray, Hemanta Mukhopadhyay and Soumitra Chatterjee lived and worked. There’s a minimalistic one in green on Sarat Chatterjee Avenue with a pair of binoculars and ‘Charulata’ written on it. Amazingly, the art isn’t the product of a big group of artists but two particularly talented artists — Santosh Das and Ranjit Das. They don’t even use stencils for their work but paint by hand. They work while the sunlight lasts with passersby, pedestrians and traffic to keep them company. There’s more coming up along Mirza Ghalib Street, Theatre Road and Park Street. How about some in North Kolkata, fellas? And how about showcasing some more women?